


Living on the Road With Demons

by growlery, reena_jenkins



Category: Bandom, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cobra Starship
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Community: pod-together, Cover Art, Crossover, Fivesome, Fivesome - F/M/M/M/M, Gratuitous Snuggles, Kidnapping, Multi, Not!Fic, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Scooby Doo jokes, Violence, Women Being Awesome, abuse of emoticons, also the word nefarious i think, reluctant slayerdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:58:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery, https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Probably Victoria's vehement protests that she is NOT a Slayer would hold more weight if she didn't, y'know, keep slaying things.</p><p>(or, an epic tale of LOVE and LOSS wherein there is ACTION! ADVENTURE! EMOTION! ORGIES! EMOTICONS!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living on the Road With Demons

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [[art] Living on the Road with Demon(ically-inspired Quotations)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/482071) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins). 



> Story written by quintenttsy.  
> Podfic read by reena_jenkins.  
> Coverart designed by quintenttsy.

 

 

You can download Living on the Road with Demons as an [MP3](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2012/B-BtVS-Living%20on%20the%20Road%20With%20Demons.mp3) or as an [M4B](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2012/B-BtVS-Living%20on%20the%20Road%20With%20Demons%20by%20quintenttsy%20&%20reena_jenkins.m4b), or you can stream this podfic as you read by clicking below:

 

 

Victoria is not a Slayer. She is NOT. Just because she trained for it since she was twelve, just because she learnt all the karate and gymnastics and general how-to-stab-things-so-they-die-and-don’t-come-back things, it doesn’t mean she’s a Slayer. She was a Potential, yeah, but she was never called, and now she never will be because she passed that point a loooooooong time ago, so _she is not a Slayer_.

This is worth repeating, because in the past month she’s slain six vampires, two demons and one something... else, she wasn’t entirely sure what it was, honestly, but that isn’t the point. The point is, VICTORIA IS NOT A SLAYER and, yeah, she doesn’t have a problem with ending the odd vamp who happens to cross her path because if she _can_ stop an innocent person getting killed then she kind of thinks she _should_ but the universe seems to be going out of its way to put nefarious supernatural creatures in her path.

IT IS NOT FAIR.

Except that’s not a mature, adult response to the situation and fuck everyone, Victoria is a mature adult and she can handle this with more dignity than that.

“Sure,” Gabe drawls, “you are totally dignified.”

Victoria narrows her eyes at him. In all fairness, now is probably not a great demonstration of her dignity; she’s a little bit drunker than she meant to be (certainly drunker than Gabe, and wtf is up with that) leaning into Ryland’s side, her legs twining round Nate’s neck.

“I could still throw a dagger through your heart from over here,” she says, and she COULD, yeah, they all know that, they’ve seen her do it in various states of sobriety even though Victoria tries her damndest to keep her band away from demons which could kill or otherwise harm them, but they all know she wouldn’t, too.

Gabe just smirks the smirk Victoria loves him for and knee-walks over to her, chin tipped up in a blatant challenge, and Victoria leans over Nate - who squawks in protest at being squashed between them - to kiss him.

So then there are hot sweaty naked fun times, the kind it is when it’s late and they don’t have a show to play the next morning and they’re all lazy and giggly and content. And Victoria forgets about vampires and slaying and all the things which are not relevant to orgasms for a few hours, which was sort of how the whole hot sweaty naked fun times thing started, waaaaaaaay back when Victoria first told her band about the whole slaying thing.

Well, okay, she didn’t exactly tell them (though she totally would have, eventually, because they’re her bros and she loves them and she doesn’t particularly want them to get eaten by nefarious demon types but she wasn’t going to blurt it out when she mentioned to Alex that she was maybe sort of possibly interested in playing the keytar for his band (yes yes omg YES) or anything). But like, one day after a show or something they were at this club doing things people do at clubs and they all got very inadvisably drunk considering they all had to be up ridiculously early the next morning for some interview or another and when they were staggering out a few hours later, they got jumped by a load of vampires. And even inebriated, Victoria could still take the fuckers down because hi, badass Potential vampire Slayer, and also NOBODY TOUCHES HER BOYS AND GETS AWAY WITH IT.

Afterwards, when the vampires were a-staked and her entire band was gaping at her in open-mouthed suddenly-sober shock, she was just like SO YEAH I KIND OF SLAY NEFARIOUS SUPERNATURAL CREATURES IN MY SPARE TIME and they were a curious mixture of o_______________O and *___________________* because Victoria taking down a gang of people is hot as all hell, okay.

And then Gabe was like ...that actually makes so much SENSE, I mean, I knew you had to be doing SOMETHING to keep your legs so, y’know, leggy, and she thwacked him with the back of a still-bloody stake just because she could. And the tension was kind of ~assuaged, for the time being, but Victoria was still just like BUT WHAT IF THEY ARE FREAKED OUT because they were still mostly like o______________________O until Nate was just like, I am so attracted to you right now, I feel like you should know this.

Alex and Ryland nodded hard. Gabe fucking _swooned_ , said, “I do love a girl who can beat up people twice her size,” and he actually sounded like he meant it, unlike the one boyfriend Victoria's ever managed to hang onto long enough to tell about her secret double life. (They... didn't last long after that.) And Victoria was just like, huh. So then they stumbled back to the bus for sweaty awesome sex! \o/

And then, y’know, there’s figuring out the boundaries of whatever it is they’re doing is, like, is it only okay if they’re all doing it together or can Alex and Ryland make out when Alex’s making pancakes (the answer to that is MOTHERFUCKING NO if they don’t want burnt pancakes and MOTHERFUCKING YES otherwise, of course) and eventually they settle into a mostly-functional polyamorous quintet and it’s AWESOME.

But yeah, back to the present day, and the sudden uptick in nefarious supernatural creatures who want to cause Victoria and/or her bandmates pain and misery and general bad things which usually end in death! Gabe wanted them to become a super-secret demon slaying gang FOR THE GOOD OF THE COBRA but Victoria was just like :| do I even need to tell you why that would be THE WORST IDEA EVER :| though she did give them a few basic self-defence lessons JUST IN CASE and also because she never gets tired of dropping them on their asses.

Oh! And Gabe totally gets a rabbi to bless their merch table to try and help protect their merch-wearing fans from vampires, because fuck you Christianity-centric traditions, and Victoria’s pretty sure some of the newer t-shirts have anti-demonic sigils worked into the designs. It’s such a _Gabe_ thing to do but when Victoria corners him and makes unimpressed faces at him, he just makes innocent faces right back like, what, ME? and she gives up. She’ll never tell him, because god knows he doesn’t need the encouragement, but it’s kind of really sweet and she doesn't have the heart to tell him he got the symbols backwards.

SO ANYWAY. They're all on their guard at the moment because of the vampires appearing wherever they turn thing, and they're extra careful not to go anywhere alone because, okay, there was that one time about a week ago when Nate and Victoria were out doing... something, idk, maybe they were on a food run? And Victoria got stopped by a fan who wanted to give her something for Gizmo but Nate was just like FOOOOOOOOOOOD (I may be projecting a little here but I haven’t eaten in like thirteen hours, okay) so he went off without her, and Victoria got caught up talking to the fan until there was this awful, earth-shattering scream.

Victoria's heart actually stuttered and she was running before she even knew what she was doing, hurtling in the direction Nate had gone, hand already going for her emergency stake. She ground to a halt when she saw him, shoved up against the wall by a blonde-haired girl vampire, probably not much more than half their age, fuck, and all she could think was NOT MY BOYFRIEND YOU BITCH because there were fangs are approximately TWO MILLIMETRES AWAY FROM NATE'S NECK and that is NOT FUCKING ON. Victoria staked the vampire, of fucking course, and when it was nothing more than a heap of ash on the ground Victoria grabbed Nate and kissed the shit out of him all NEVER AGAIN, YOU HEAR ME, I AM NOT WATCHING ANY OF YOU DIE. And Nate just nodded, dumbstruck, sheet-white and shaking all over. It's never been that close before, and it hasn't been since, and it never ever will be if Victoria has anything to say about it.

BUT ANYWAY. They're extra extra vigilant but the one place, THE ONE PLACE they all let their guard down is on stage. Like, why would they need to worry? They’re in front of hundreds of thousands of people doing what they all do best, saving the world one scene kid at a time, and Victoria knows in her bones that this, THIS is what she was born to do. The rush she gets from performing is unlike anything else in the entire world and she wouldn’t trade it for ANYTHING.

But then the rush... changes. Not really noticeably, but there’s an edge of awareness, knowing something is watching her, something is WAITING, and there’s this new tightness under her skin like she can feel it hiding there, and Victoria never trained herself out of trusting her gut instinct. And her gut instinct is telling her that shit’s about to go down but, seriously, she doesn’t have TIME for shit to go down, this was never supposed to be a full time thing for her. So she doesn't ignore it so much as push it to the back of her brain and box it up nice and tight and resolve to not think about it, at all, and chalk the weird feeling down to the weather changing or something.

And then, one day, just as they're starting to head off stage, there’s this _voice_ , like ashes and the wind and a gathering light, and it says, “Are you ready to be strong?”

Victoria panics. It was almost nothing, ALMOST, and she could’ve ignored it except for how her entire body _shivers_ and she knows, inexplicably, in the same way she knows a vampire from a human and that Alex’s pancakes are going to burn before Ryland’s even leant over to kiss him, that this is important. That this MEANS SOMETHING, that it isn’t something she is physically able to ignore any more. What happened with Nate was too fucking close and no matter what she thinks she can’t watch them all the time, can’t make sure they’re never in a position where that could happen to them and she could- lose them. Unless... unless she steps up.

And Victoria, the girl was never supposed to be That Girl, says, “Yes.”

She doesn’t mention it to the guys or anything, even though they give her weird looks and ask what’s up when they’re out of earshot of anyone else (god, she loves and hates how well they know her) because that would defeat the PURPOSE of this. She is trying to PROTECT them. So she’s a little bit distant when they get back to the bus and hides out in her bunk instead of going to party with the other bands and the guys are kind of worried about her, but they all need their space sometimes, right? They’ve been on the road for a while, Victoria probably just needs some quality alone time. Right? Right.

So Victoria is ALL ALONE to brood on her newfound Slayerdom, which is a TERRIBLE idea because brooding is not something you should ever do without someone to kick you out of it when it gets too bad. She knows that things will have to change. She’s not really that sure _how_ , exactly, since she lost contact with all her old ~supernatural contacts years ago, and she hasn’t seen her Watcher since he left her for mustier tome-filled pastures (BEST), so she’s basically in the dark about the whole thing. All she knows is bad things are happening, and _worse_ things are going to happen, and fuck she should’ve figured something was up before but she was too busy pretending it was not her problem and she didn’t have to deal with it.

Maybe, she thinks, maybe after they finish out the tour - there’s only a few days left, after all - she can take a break from the band. She doesn’t want to, fuck does she not want to, but. It would keep her boys safe. It would give her time to find out what the fuck is even going on, to- to see how she can help. This isn’t her life, after all. Much as she’s spent the past ten years pretending otherwise, she was not born to play a keytar or sing in a band. She was born to be a Slayer, _the_ Slayer, and. She has to accept that, now.

It becomes even more obvious when she goes into the back room in search of her iPod and wrenches the door off when she touches it. Shit. _Shit_. There is just. There is just no way this is going to end well.

AND THEN SECRET ANGST \o/ /o\ Victoria is very good at pretending that Everything Is Fine And I’m Totally Not Planning On Leaving To Possibly Pursue Supernatural-Creature-Slaying Full Time but these are her BOYS, okay, they KNOW HER and they can smell bullshit (or maybe Ryland’s old socks, but, still, the sudden absence of a door to the back room was Very Suspicious even if the way Victoria's been acting wasn't). So when the tour ends and they’re all getting ready to go home and Victoria calls a band meeting, they are INSTANTLY on high alert.

She kind of laughs, awkwardly, because it’s not THAT serious and is like, “So I was thinking I needed a break from the band. Not for good or anything, just, just for a bit, because it’s getting a little intense and I need time to, y’know, sit back. And. Do things. Things that are definitely not slaying, nope, not at all, no slaying for this girl.”

And then they’re DELIBERATELY obtuse like, oh yay, a break! We could ALL do with a break this sounds like a FANTASTIC idea and Victoria is just like DDDDDDDDD: what do I do now DDDDDDDDD: so then she tries the whole >:( ACTUALLY IT’S YOU GUYS I WANT A BREAK FROM, GOD, CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE omg please never leave me ;__________; thing and of course the last bit is the only bit they hear, god, does she think they’re NEW or something, seriously.

Nate’s just like, I think I’m a little insulted. And Victoria’s about to be all GOOD >:( but then he’s all, you think we’d fall for that, that’s like the stupidest cliche ever. And Alex is like, yeah, dude, the whole we-cannot-be-together-because-it-is-dangerous-for-you thing is such bullshit and Ryland says, very seriously, “With great power comes great responsibility. For orgams,” and that kind of snaps the tension in the bus in half and they all end up laughing kind of hysterically.

“Don’t lie, Vicky-T,” Gabe says, when they’ve mostly calmed down, “you’d miss us if you ever went away.”

Victoria rolls her eyes, because semi-quoting your own lyrics is a level of douchebaggery Gabe can actually mostly get away with, but still. “Totally,” she deadpans, and they all tackle her and cuddle the shit out of her because sometimes Victoria forgets that she’s awesome and lovely and stupidly hot and they love her a whole lot.

SO THEN. Victoria figured out, in the days before the tour, that whatever’s going on can somehow be traced back to Sunnydale. Or, more specifically, the Hellmouth. She tried contacting her old Watcher and got nothing but a dead line, and she didn’t have any current numbers for anyone else she used to know, but the Hellmouth is the centre of nefarious supernatural happenings, and if they’re going to start anywhere it would make sense for it to be there. When she mentions this to the guys Nate is all, “Oh, yeah, there was this Five Government Conspiracies You Didn’t Know About thing on cracked.com, and the Sunnydale sinkhole was number one,” and Victoria’s just like o____________________o whut (because screw timelines and general sense-making things, this is not!fic, okay).

AND THEN ROADTRIPS \o/ There is much cuddling in the bus they have appropriated for this purpose and have taken to calling the Mystery Machine because fuck yeah are they Scooby Doo and the gang. (Gabe wants to be Fred, because Fred is the leader, right, but Victoria is just like honey, honey no, you are BLATANTLY Scooby and they all snicker because yeah, he totally is.) Anyway, yes, CUDDLING so much cuddling because nobody’s talking about the big Pink Stake in the Room (or, well, bus): the world is kind of sort of ending. Everything is, to put it bluntly, going to shit. They have no idea what’s going on, or what they’re really going to FIND in Sunnydale. They might- they might not come back. AND NOBODY WANTS TO THINK ABOUT DOOMFEELINGS SO THEY CUDDLE INSTEAD. THIS IS A GREAT PLAN, A++ GUYS.

So they get to Sunnydale after... some amount of time driving (idk I am British, the concept of not being able to drive to any edge of your bit of landmass in less than a day is utterly foreign to me) and find basically a great big hole in the ground. Ryland is all, ooooooooooh geology! And Alex rolls his eyes all, it’s a hole. It’s not that exciting. I can dig bigger holes in the sand, okay, let’s go to the beach. Nate’s just like YOUR FACE IS A GREAT BIG HOLE and Victoria just facepalms at them, but their bickering is actually kind of reassuring.

“Come on, gang,” she says, smirking at them, “let’s split up and look for clues.”

And they all groan because FIRST OFF, Victoria is Velma, okay, they’ve established this, and also THAT IS THE MOST TERRIBLE IDEA EVER DID SHE ACTUALLY WATCH SCOOBY DOO OR ANY HORROR MOVIE EVER. Victoria just rolls her eyes all I WAS KIDDING because everyone’s getting waaaaaaaay more tense than she’s comfortable with, come on guys, and suggests that since they’re vaguely in the area (a few hours away, eh) they should head over to her old stomping ground in LA to try and find some of her old contacts in person.

EXCEPT. When they get to LA, Victoria triggers one of the wards set up to find Potentials. And people have been watching, nefarious people with nefarious plans, and when they realise a Slayer has unwittingly wandered into their midst they are like mwahaha time for villainy! Because convenient plot points are convenient, okay. They can make a killing (pun intended) on a Slayer’s body parts.

EXCEPT (hmmmm, actually, maybe something that isn't except since I only said that a paragraph ago... but?) THEY KIDNAP NATE INSTEAD.

It's getting dark and they're poking round a warehouse which certainly wasn't abandoned eight years ago, and, well, the thing is, Victoria and Nate are pretty much the same height when Victoria isn't wearing heels (which, no, not appropriate for this venture) and he may or may not be wearing one of her hoodies because they all share clothes when they're on tour and too lazy to differentiate between what's theirs and what isn't (unless it's Ryland's socks) when they're getting dressed in the morning (and sometimes at night; Victoria has been known on, um, several occasions, to grab one of her boys' shirts to sleep in because they're comfortable and smell like everything she loves, and there was that memorable occasions where Alex - supposedly accidentally - put on a pair of her panties and then just... didn't take them off, for a while, and okay maybe now isn't the best time for sexy reminiscing).

The point is, from behind, Victoria and Nate look basically identical. So when the Cobras get jumped by the Demon of Unknown Eviltude's Equally Evil But Not Especially Bright Henchdemons - "Fyarls," Victoria will spit when she finally wakes up, "Strong like ox, smart like tractor, and paralytic snot to boot. I HATE Fyarl demons." - Nate is the one dragged off while they, idk, sit on the others to stop them from getting Nate back and/or ripping out their fucking THROATS for daring to touch him. Nate can't scream because the henchdemon who grabbed him has one arm around his waist and one around his mouth, but his face is white and his eyes are huge with terror and Victoria is a second away from hurling the henchdemon sitting on her across the room when they knock the four of them out.

They come to a few hours later, groggy and confused, and only remember what happened when they realise Nate. isn't. there. They're all like DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD: WE MUST RESCUE HIM IMMEDIATELY and Victoria especially feels bad because it was HER the demon was after, obviously, and this NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED if she’d stood her ground and refused to let the others come, or if, or if she'd just been a little STRONGER, if she'd fought back a little harder. What's the fucking use in being a Slayer if she can't even protect the people she loves? That was the whole POINT of this.

But she runs her hands through her hair and puts on the most unconvincing smile ever and is like, yeah, guys, we can do this, we'll get him back, we WILL. And Ryland is all BUT HOW WILL WE EVEN FIND HIM and Victoria’s like, relax, relax, I KNOW PEOPLE, we WILL find him oh god what if we don’t ;_________; and then Alex is like EVERYBODY CALM THE FUCK DOWN. Deep breaths, all of you - and he looks at them pointedly until they take deep, calming breaths, and then asks Victoria very calmly if she has any idea, any idea at all, where the demon might have taken Nate.

Victoria closes her eyes and thinks. “There’s a demon bar near here we should try,” she says. “I don’t know if he’ll be there, but. We can try.”

Alex nods. He is totally and completely Fred, oh god, Victoria _loves him_. She loves all of their stupid faces, and it probably makes her the most selfish person in the world but she is so, so glad she doesn’t have to do this alone.

They try the demon bar Victoria suggested, utilising Gabe’s uncanny ability to get himself on the list for ANY club to get inside. And then they look around FOR CLUES and, y’know, anything that might help them figure out how to find Nate and then. AND THEN somehow they bump into Lorne the demon who owns the place (like, maybe he noticed them poking around because Victoria’s the only one of them who’s at all stealthy, oh boys) and maybe Victoria is vaguely acquainted with him? Vaguely? Like, she knows who he is and that but she didn’t think he knew who SHE was, but it turns out he’s a HUGE fan of the band and gets all fanboy-y over Gabe, who just laps it up, grinning. And the others are like *shared eyeroll* and poke Gabe until he remembers that, oh, yeah, they were totally on a MISSION here.

“So hey,” Gabe says, and the three of them roll their eyes even harder but, whatever, if it works it works, “we’re actually looking for a friend of mine. You wouldn’t happen to have seen him, would you?”

And he describes Nate, and the demons who took him - "Fyarls," Victoria puts in, pointedly - and Lorne is like ohhhhhhhhhh I know who you mean. And they’re like \o/\o/\o/\o/\o/ except then Lorne is all, it’ll cost you, though. And they’re like /o\/o\/o\/o\/o\ because that NEVER ENDS WELL.

“What do you want?” Victoria asks, kind of sharply, and Lorne grins.

Precisely one minute and forty six seconds later, Gabe is on stage with the mic in his hand, belting out Guilty Pleasure because it is ALWAYS AND FOREVER appropriate, even if for once he actually DIDN’T come out with the express intention of making people dance. And of course he owns it and the whole place loves it and Gabe comes down from the stage grinning, hands raised aloft like AM I AWESOME OR AM I AWESOME. More eye-rolling is in order. _Much_ more. But the important part is that Lorne tells them where they can find Nate and then it’s COBRA STARSHIP minus one TO THE RESCUE, BABY.

Nate has been sitting in said Demon of Unknown Eviltude’s lair like a good little kidnappee, because the demon lasted all of twenty minutes before it taped Nate’s mouth shut and dumped him in a human-ish-sized box and went to go find its buddies to work out how much they could get for him. (FOR him? FOR HIM? Jesus fucking christ they are not fucking selling him WHERE THE FUCK ARE NATE’S BANDMATES WHEN HE NEEDS THEM) So he’s sitting tight trying to figure out if there’s any way to get out of this box, wtf couldn’t they have just tied him up like normal bad guys, this is so undignified :((((((((((( and he’s considering bashing at the sides to get it to roll over or something, do boxes even roll? And then he overhears them talking about the Slayers. He stiffens immediately, trying not to think about what it means that they’re talking about this kind of stuff with him in obvious earshot, and listens. Apparently, they’re saying, apparently thanks to something that happened with the Hellmouth that mostly goes over Nate’s head, everyone who could ever have been a Slayer had the opportunity to become one.

“Opportunity,” Nate repeats to himself, and feels something awful curl around his chest and squeeze which has nothing to do with his impending doom.

Except it’s not QUITE as impending as he thought because then - FINALLY - his bandmates bust in and save the day. Well, it’s mostly Victoria, but Gabe and Ryland totally help and Alex hurries over while the demons are distracted and gets Nate out of the box. Nate is like FUCKING FINALLY, YOU DO REALISE THEY WERE GOING TO AUCTION OFF MY BODY PARTS >:( and Alex is just like, dude, dude, YOU WERE IN A BOX and tries valiantly not to start laughing, but the disgruntled look on Nate’s face is _priceless_.

“Don’t you fucking dare tell Gabe,” Nate orders him, but it’s way too late. The others have dispatched of the demons and are heading over to check Nate’s okay.

“Tell Gabe what?” Gabe asks, and then he sees the box.

Nate stomps off before he can say anything, Gabe’s hysterical laughter following him all the way. He is never, ever going to hear the end of it, he just knows.

(He doesn’t. Gabe makes box jokes _for the rest of time_ at the most inappropriate moments, and Nate is forced to shut him up with his mouth.)

But of course when the others get back there is sweaty awesome I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE ALIVE AND IN POSSESSION OF ALL YOUR BODY PARTS sex and Nate thinks he can probably deal with the teasing if they always make it up to him with orgasms. He vaguely remembers something he needed to talk to them about, something IMPORTANT, something probably Victoria-shaped? But Alex and Ryland are sucking him off at the same time while Gabe crooks his fingers into his ass and Victoria rides his face, so it basically disappears until they all collapse in a very sweaty heap a long, long time later, and Nate’s post-orgasmic haze wears off.

He sits up abruptly. “Victoria,” he says, poking at her, “Victoria, Vicky-T, _hey_.”

And she finally lifts her head, looking grumpy that her own haze was interrupted, and he has no idea how to ask what he needs to so he just blurts out, “Why do you want to leave us?”

Everyone looks at him. And then they look at Victoria. “I don’t,” she says, looking confused, because she _doesn’t_ , she never wants to leave them ever ever again because she nearly died when they lost Nate and it would KILL her not to know where her boys are every second of the day.

But Nate looks kind of terrified, and he won’t look her in the eye, and he tells her what he overheard about the Slayers being activated. “Which means,” he says, very quietly, “that you had to choose to become a Slayer. And I thought. I thought you didn’t want it. At all. I thought.” He swallows hard and finally looks up at her, his eyes so, so wide. “I thought you wanted this.”

The silence that follows that is deafening. Victoria can HEAR the guys freaking out, that she’s going to leave them and, what, slay vampires for a living and get herself very messily killed, and it takes her a few moments to respond.

“I do,” she manages eventually. “Nate, I, fuck, this is ALL I want, you don’t even- I did it FOR you, for all of you, I wanted to be able to protect you and keep you safe and I know I did a fucking fantastic job of that but it was better than being mostly powerless and having to watch you-” She can’t finish, can’t get the word past her throat.

Nate still looks scared, but in an entirely different way from before. “So you’re not going to leave us?” he asks, and he sounds so _hopeful_ it hurts.

“Never,” Victoria says fiercely, and they all sort of lunge at each other and go down in a hot, sweaty pile of Cobra, holding each other tight.

AND THEN THEY RIDE OFF INTO THE SUNSET IN THE MYSTERY MACHINE THE END

 

 

 

 

 

(.....and, because I promised quintenttsy that I'd save all my bloopers from this podfic, you too can listen to me have all sorts of _mouth problems_ \- reena) 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Author's Notes:** so Reena basically came up with the entire idea, and then proceeded to make a ridiculously wonderful podfic of it because she is just that great. If there's anything funny/clever/otherwise awesome in this, it's probably down to her. I just flailed over it and made it not!fic.  <3
> 
>  **Podficcer's Notes:** Oh, man. This whole experience has been such a blast - from the very first "let me ramble into my mp3 player about this idea I had" email I sent to quintenttsy, to the art we sent back and forth, to the hilarious and epic story that she wrote for me from that one idea..... The whole thing was just _awesome_. I'm so beyond impressed that quintenttsy took this silly little idea that I had, and made it into a STORY, with WORDS and FULL SENTENCES and AWESOME. Just, the whole process was full of joy and glee and smiles and clappy hands. And then, when I wanted to use Nicki Minaj's  Starships as the Intro/Outro music, quintenttsy encouraged my ridiculousness!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[art] Living on the Road with Demon(ically-inspired Quotations)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/482071) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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